Would you play a twin pulsar Phantom given the choice?

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Please don't bother making rules for the sword! Sword = Epic Powerfist, simples!

The suggestion from previously for moving the extra attacks from the Powerfist to the base Titan was a good one though I thought. Assume it comes from the shoulder missiles instead.

That way the close-combat titans most people use would stay the same while the rarer twin-pulsar gets a boost for when it should be close. I'd use it then, yes.

Then base the stats on what works in Epic, not what bloody Forgeworld thinks is cool for a game of lolApocalypse...

edit: got no problem with checking out the stats for things that aren't official in Epic and comparing.

The idea of the FF attacks was to make the power fist interesting compared to the pulsar. If no one ever take pulsars, tone down the fist. Why does the only option for tuning stuff seems to be to make it MORE powerfull ?

It was also to give the titan more FF attacks to make up for it's lower DC.

The obvious solution is to transfer the extra FF attacks to the titan itself (or the inbuilt shoulder launchers I guess), leaving the fist with the extra CC attacks AND the shooting, still a very good choice. I'd consider toning down the ranged shooting as well honestly, as even just the shooting stat (6 x AP4+/AT4+ @30cm) is a good titan weapon, especially on something as mobile as the phantom/warlock.

I feel disappointed that they wrote out the 3-crew-mind-meld fluff in favor of a single titan exarch (and presumably farseer for a warlock titan).

Then ignore them. Contradictions in the background are nothing new.

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GW's fluff writers were very much awake when the 'unreliable narrator' was discussed in English Lit.

I do agree with this sentiment in general terms (it always seems to be more beneficial special rules and better stats, but maybe I'm just a grump), and given ACs are usually interested in the list themselves it is natural to want to make it competitive. However, it seems perfectly logical to me that adjustments should be made based on what the current balance of the options is. If it has been established that the power fist is better that the pulsar, this means either the power fist is overpowered, the pulsar is underpowered, or both. It is not automatically one or the other.

Obviously transferring the FF extra attacks to the base titan should only be done if a pulsar phantom is perceived to be underpowered overall (i.e. not just underpowered relative to the power fist). If the power fist is also overpowered, it makes sense to dock its shooting too. If on the other hand the pulsar is fine as it is, just dock the fist (e.g. tweak both the shooting and the FF down slightly).

Simples.

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Not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not, personally I doubt it's intentional! I do sometimes think it'd be more cool if the fluff was more clearly presented as from the perspective of an individual or specific source. It would add a bit of flavour, and would make omissions and inconsistencies (intentional or not) a bit more palatable too.

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It's a good point. You're right, I can't imagine GW thought about it all that carefully... though I do think it'd be a great CYA move by any new fluff writer to be fairly explicit about how 'postmodern' their texts actually are.

That said, much of the 'Canon' is fairly clearly the point of view of the 'Empire' and its functionaries.... and it seems incumbent upon the reader to realize that these folks are basically guano-crazed and fundamentally unreliable. E.g. it would seem there's a fair amount of room for 'slippage' and narrative inaccuracy in any technical manual that references the "machine gods" as an essential component of a piece of equipment.